Todd Dills

From the cabover collection: Bevy of new photos of classics by Don Christner

Reader and sometime Overdrive content contributor Don Christner, based in Wyoming, took all of the photos in the post at a military-supply store called Supply Sargent in Cheyenne. “The family has owned the property since the 1950s,” Christner says. “Behind the store is a fenced-in yard where they used to run a trucking company. The trucks are just what they’ve bought and sold and traded for that are left.”

The store, something of a veterans’ hangout, says Christner, he hung around this past Saturday afternoon for “about an hour before I asked them if I could take photos,” he says, figuring he had about a 50/50 chance shop owners would let him. But let him they did, for about an hour more. The Dodge cabover above he says seems to have been last licensed in 1974. “It’s probably a mid-’60s model, with a 335 Cummins with a 4×4 16-speed transmission, still wearing its work clothes and flying Hunt Transportation markings. It was definitely the most unusual and interesting truck there.”

This 4070 International had had its “frame stretched, welded and fish-plated,” Christner says. “That told me that it had operated up into the 1980s, when length laws relaxed and short tractors were lengthened. There were a lot of trucks with lengthened frames on the road at that time.”

This cabover Pete “was in very good condition,” Christner says, “but I never looked under the cab to see what engine it had.”

The White Freightliners you see in the slider below were Safeway fleet tractors from a time when Safeway had a “very recognizable fleet of trucks out of Denver,” Christner says. “They have NTC 335 Cummins engines. A lot of drivers will recognize them.”

Another White Freightliner on the premises had “centerpoint steering,” noted Christner, “where you have to pull the steering wheel back to center after turning a corner, instead of just letting go of the wheel to let it center.”

The White Freightliner mentioned above..

This White Freightliner “would have been very pretty when it was new with that paint job,” says Christner.

The following two photos of this Cummins-powered Kenworth COE ended the shoot, he adds:

“I’m pretty sure that window opened and closed for just a one-time shoot,” Christner says. “I told them I would post the pictures to Overdrive on the Reader Rigs gallery. They seemed to like that, and I thanked them for their time.”

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Todd Dills

Todd Dills is Senior Editor of Overdrive magazine and writes from Nashville, Tenn. He frequently covers business, regulatory and lifestyle topics for the magazine and at OverdriveOnline.com. His work on the “CSA’s Data Trail” series in Overdrive about the federal CSA program was awarded the highest honor in trade journalism – the “Grand Neal” – by American Business Media at the 2014 Jesse H. Neal Awards. Dills’ Channel 19 blog covers a grab bag of on-highway hearsay, owner-operator news and driver views from the roadways the nation over. His work in trucking journalism builds on a background of news feature, fiction and other creative writing and editing. Find him here at the Channel 19 blog and via his Twitter feed, or send tips to tdills@randallreilly.com or via phone at 205-907-2481.